petite anglaise

Fat Tuesday:  a pretext to eat indecent amounts of nutella (the crèpes being pretty much incidental), caramelised apples and ice cream before not actually giving up anything at all for Lent, as I am rather selective in my observance of religious festivals. The general rule of thumb being if it allows for feasting, I’ll be there.

I have ten people coming over this evening for crèpes and cidre, and have visions of myself waking up tomorrow morning, face down on the living room parquet, with nutella in my hair.  Possibly without eyebrows, if anyone decides to partake of a crèpe flambée, god forbid.

Mardi Gras also means that Tadpole wil be attending her third Carnaval at the mairie with the childminder this evening.  Mr Frog is on collection duty tonight, so sadly I will be spared seeing the spectacle that is tata in her giant harlequin costume.

Of the three costumes Tadpole has donned so far for the Mardi Gras Carnival, today’s is without a doubt the most girly (although I did draw the line at pink). 

First, there was the peapod costume she was crammed into aged 9 months, which had no legs, and boasted large, 3D foam peas which she fiddled with constantly, until one, inevitably, fell off.  Apologies to the kind lady who loaned me that costume, but I did attempt to conceal repair the damage with superglue. One day I fear Tadpole will take me to task for inflicting ridicule on her when she was too young and helpless to protest.  But oh, how we laughed.

Last year’s déguisement was a cuddly leopard outfit, and the surreal park experience which ensued while she was wearing it is recounted here. 

For Tadpole’s last Mardi Gras in Paris we have a fantastic fairy costume, complete with wand and fluffy hairband, courtesy of Matalan (a snip, at £5).  The wearing of which is not solely limited to festivals, as it has already had an outing during our weekend grocery shop, when an overexcited Tadople pirouetted around the aisles, narrowly missing shoppers and artfully dodging trolleys, all the while brandishing her sequin-covered wand and shouting “ABACADABRA” at the top of her lungs. 

On that occasion we were given three complimentary Chupa Chup lollipops by the Franprix checkout staff, who were completely spellbound.

Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I am weighing up the pros and cons of introducing fairy costume as compulsory attire for all future shopping trips.

We walk, leather glove in pink woolen mitten, up the rue de Belleville towards the Eglise St-Jean Baptiste. The narrow pavements are bustling with Saturday morning shoppers despite the biting chill in the air, and my stomach begins to growl as we pass first an appetising pâtisserie (whose boast is that they have twenty different flavours of macaron), then a tiny, pungently scented fromagerie, our noses alerted to its presence long before we reach it.

Tadpole is busy “blowing clouds” through her chapped lips.

I notice, quite by chance, that the SNCF boutique is unusually empty and seize this opportunity to renew Tadpole’s Enfant Plus travelcard. (A truly wonderful invention: thirteen hours of excruciating labour pain = a 50% discount on all train travel for me, plus a free seat for Tadpole). Soon to be expired travelcard is helpfully stowed in the pocket of my handbag, as a reminder, along with a set of passport photos which Mr Frog obligingly had taken last weekend.

We take our seat at the desk, and I adopt the saccharine tone I reserve for most French fonctionnaires, as it has just occurred to me that I do not have any form of Tadople ID about my person.

“Bonjour Madame, j’espère que vous allez pouvoir m’aider…”

I needn’t have worried, because Tadpole has already launched into a full charm offensive.

“Bonjour Madame,” she trills, smiling winsomely. “Je m’appelle [Tadpole Frog], et j’ai deux ans!”

I feel ever so slightly nervous about how much more information Tadpole intends to volunteer, as she can be somewhat random in what she chooses to share. The day that “mummy made some bubbles in the bath” being a case in point, which was recounted, with accompanying sound effects, to anyone who would listen.

Thankfully she stays on topic on this occasion, and starts telling the lady that it is her birthday tomorrow. (Tomorrow, in this instance, meaning June). We obtain the card, without incident, and I manage to persuade a reluctant Tadpole that it is time to leave. Not an easy feat, as she has taken off her mittens, obviously feeling quite at home, and is now enthusiastically exploring the possibilities of the swivelling chair.

When we finally get home, after lunching on couscous together, on a whim, in a local restaurant, I take out the travelcards and compare Tadpole’s photos. The difference takes my breath away. Casting my mind back to February 2005, I try to remember how many words she could say, or what she enjoyed doing back then, and cannot summon up an image of this smaller, rather hairless, toddler. There is something less definite about her facial features on the older picture, but it’s difficult to put my finger on exactly what has changed. Seeing her evolve a little every day, it is only when I am confronted with hard evidence that I realise just how far we have come.

Tadpole snatches the picture from my hand.

“Look, there’s baby [Tadpole]!”

“Yes, that’s a picture from when you were just one year old,” I explain.

“I a big girl now,” she replies, seriously. “I do all my wee wees in my potty. Just like mummy, but mummy does them in the big toilet!”

I am somewhat relieved that we didn’t have this particular conversation at the SNCF shop.

Just a warning that I will be moving this humble abode from my money-grabbing, bandwidth-poor French host to a cuddly US operation named A Small Orange. If all goes well, you won’t even notice.

A relief? Oh yes, Amen to that.

Just when the tips of the crocuses (or croci?) I planted in my windowbox at Christmas time had started to emerge, albeit tentatively, and spring seemed to be hovering tantalisingly just around the corner, Paris is now horribly cold again. Cold, and damp.

Tuesday was the nadir of this sorry week. First of all, in the mad dash to visit Tadpole’s other local maternelle with Mr Frog before work, I managed to forget my waterproofs and simply did not have time to go back for them. Instead I stoically pushed the buggy through driving sleet and rain, head bowed in resignation, all the way to the childminder’s house. Water dripped miserably from the end of my nose. My coat soaked up water like a sponge, growing steadily heavier.

“Poor mummy’s getting wet,” remarked Tadpole helpfully, from her vantage point on the dry side of the waterproof buggy cover. A puddle was forming on its top, so I tipped the pushchair over sideways, without warning, to drain the water off, much to Tadpole’s delight.

“You don’t say,” I muttered, wondering idly whether at the age of two and a half, it wasn’t about time Tadpole learned about the joys of sarcasm.

Swerving to miss a crotte, rendered liquid and even more treacherous by the rain, I wanted nothing more than to turn back towards home, languish in a hot bath and crawl back into my bed, where instead of sleeping the previous night, I had hovered in that frustrating limbo between slumber and wakefulness, unable to switch off my addled brain, too busy composing and re-composing ever more vitriolic lettres recommandées to my web hosts. In French.

Arriving at the childminder’s high rise block, our nostrils were greeted by the familiar tang of (human? canine?) urine in the lifts. The sliding doors firmly closed behind us, I pulled back the raincover and bent over the back of the pushchair to plant a kiss on Tadpole’s nose.

“Look mummy’s upside down. Like a bat!” exclaimed Tadpole, as my hair rained droplets all over her dry clothes.

I smiled a wry little smile, in spite of myself, thankful for the presence of this cheerful little person who always knows how to make everything bearable. I only have to make eye contact with Tadpole and my worries have a funny way of dissolving, instantly.

And because I’d like to end this post on a positive note, I won’t trouble you with how I skidded on the wet floor of the métro and twisted my ankle, landing unceremoniously on my buttocks.

No. Let’s stick with the first ending.

I was off work feeling under the weather today, and it seems that my newly migrated – to a bigger server as my host was threatening to pull the plug if I didn’t upgrade – site was having sympathy pains. Much installation stress and several expensive phone calls later and, fingers crossed, we seem to have lift off again, albeit with the loss of a few comments I hadn’t had chance to back up in the database.

And I needn’t have bothered having my hair dyed. It turned white overnight with worry.

If you have any shopping to do on Amazon, please consider clicking on one of my “reading” links in the sidebar to do so (you don’t have to buy my recommended book, anything you buy on the site will in fact earn me a very small commission). I love writing petiteanglaise, but it does cost me money to maintain this site, with its growing bandwidth needs, and sometimes it is money I can ill afford.

Right, off to bed, and hopefully back tomorrow.

Oh my! Only yours truly could manage to co-star with a high-tech portapotty and a wheelie bin for my fifteen nanoseconds of fame.

I staggered into Starbucks on a rainy Wednesday morning en route for work, regretting not a little the liberal quantities of wine and champagne consumed the previous night. Nothing to do with VD, incidentally, as Lover was safely in Rennes, watching the football at the pub, hopeless romantic that he is. Instead, as it was my Tadpole-free night, I had kindly offered to help a couple of girlfriends celebrate their ill-timed birthdays.

Eight hours of sustained (proper English-style) binge drinking later, and we narrowly avoided being locked in a (closed) Etienne Marcel métro station.

But that’s another story.

So: 9.50 am, Wednesday morning, tired, emotional and rather nervous. Barely had I pushed open the door of the café when the journalist who had contacted me a couple of days earlier via my comments box (and who can’t have been more than twelve years old) accosted me (she had apparently already asked every other person in the building if they weren’t petite – I was late). Returning to her table while I ordered a restorative scone and coffee, she waited patiently for me to arrive. I cringed as my Christian name was shouted out when my drink was ready, not even noticing that it was also scrawled across my takeaway cup in marker pen.

Call me paranoid, but I’ve always been brought up to believe that journalists cannot be trusted.

*Flash* went her expensive looking camera, over and over again. I had been instructed to pretend to type something on the (borrowed) laptop, and the journalist actually wanted me to smile, but I could manage no more than a terrified, rabbit-in-the-headlights rictus. The other customers watched the sorry spectacle with interest.

As I made my exit, blushing furiously, I thought I heard a couple of people sniggering.

It was only when I arrived at the office, and a good friend pointed out that my skirt was unzipped at the back, revealing more of my tights and bottom than anyone but Lover should be allowed to see, that the reason for their mirth became clear.

Move over Bridget.

Those of you who were paying attention last January will remember a rash promise made by yours truly involving posing for the interweb in nothing but a pair of satin pyjamas. Luckily, I came second in the “best blog” category of the European Weblog Awards, and didn’t have to put my money where my (big) mouth was.

This year, I will refrain from trying to influence the voting in such an underhand way, but may I suggest that you spare a few seconds to take a look at this site and cast your votes as you see fit. There are some very good blogs represented there, and hopefully you may stumble across some others which tickle your fancy.

I am rather thinly spread across several categories once again, but I think petite anglaise is more a personal blog than an expat blog these days, don’t you think? I think the term “best” sounds very nice, but I’m not sure how one is supposed to quantify how much “better” one blog is than another.

The progress Tadpole is making with the English language never ceases to astonish me.

Lately I have witnessed the sudden addition of the past tense to her delightful little sentences, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Sadly, while her grammar may be correct, the information she volunteers is at times a little sketchy, or, in some cases, just plain untrue.

For example, Tadpole arrives home from her weekend away with Mamie and Papy on Monday evening, and the first thing to cross the threshold of my apartment is a proudly brandished hand bearing a rather ragged, grubby-looking pink plaster. Just in case I have failed to notice, she exclaims “Look mummy! Look at my hand! I’ve got a plaster on!”

“Have you got a bobo? How did you get that?” I enquire. Not in an ohmygodyou’vehurt yourselfhowcoulddaddyletthathappenonhiswatch sort of way, you understand. I am simply curious to see whether she is able to explain how it happened.

“Yes. It was red and wet,” she elaborates, helpfully.

“Oh, I see, it was bleeding, was it?”

“Yes, my finger was bleeding.”

“How did you hurt it?”

“I did it on the floor,” she replies, vaguely.

Clearly I’m not going to get the specifics without putting words into her mouth, so I resign myself to just not knowing. As it happens, Mr Frog is none the wiser, as no-one actually saw how this mysterious (and so tiny it is barely visible to the human eye) bobo was inflicted.

For an illustration of how good my daughter is at lying in the past tense, I only have to ask her what she had for lunch at the childminder’s house on any given day of the week.

“I ate some Chocolate!”

“Chocolate? For lunch.”

“Yes!”

“Nothing else?”

“No, I had just chocolate.”

I doubt it, somehow.

So comfortable with the past tense is my Tadpole, that she is now using it masterfully as ammunition to get her own way. Again, with somewhat sparing use of truth.

“Right, I’m making pasta for dinner,” I say firmly, making sure that it sounds like a statement, and not at all like a question that could possibly be answered with the dreaded “no” word.

“I can’t have pasta. I had that yesterday,” comes the (total factually incorrect) reply.

This tactic can be used in a variety of situations, and I have now seen most of the possible permutations: “I wore/ate/did that/read that book/went there/saw daddy/went to see tata yesterday.

Grr.

But the thing that strikes fear into my heart this morning, as I leave the childminder’s house, is hearing Tadpole’s voice piping up behind her closed front door.

“Maman, elle a dit que…” At which point her voice fades away altogether as they move from the hallway into another room, and try as I might, ear shamelessly pressed to door, I can hear no more.

Given her apparent ability to fabricate monstrous lies with alarming ease, I dare not imagine what followed.

It is Saturday morning, and I am not yet sure whether I have a hangover. By rights I should: two G&Ts, a Kir Royal, a beer and a Cosmopolitan would normally be a toxic enough mixture to lay me low. Thankfully, as I open first one cautious eye, then another, exposure to light doesn’t herald in a searing headache. Nor does breakfast cereal cause any queasiness. This is fortunate, because there are few things worse than a trip to the hairdresser’s when one is suffering from mal au cheveux.

I apply foundation, not feeling brave enough to stare at myself in the mirror under fluorescent lights without it, and thank the lord for the absorbent powers of sushi rice. Taking a final long look at my hair, which perversely always looks particularly fetching the day I decide to have it cut, I wrap up warmly and hurry to the metro.

I rarely enjoy paying a visit to the hairdressers. It’s disappointment guaranteed. The only variable is the actual degree of that disappointment, which can vary from utter despair (the haircut inflicted on me days before the birth of Tadpole, which I describe as my “racoon with mange” look, little documented in the photo album) to a feeling of having been cheated (no difference discernible to the human eye, for the price of a mid-range digital camera). Scarred by past hairdressing misfortunes, I dread that final moment of truth when I must replace my glasses, hands trembling, and behold the results. Adopting my most convincing “oh, a pair of socks with polka dots on, that’s exactly what I wanted for Christmas” face., an expression which remains frozen in place until out of sight of the salon, where my bottom lip starts to wobble and then I crack, barely stifle a howl.

I give my name to fiftysomething facelift on the front desk, presumably the salon owner. She gives me a resentful glare when I confess I cannot recall the name of my hairdresser. I suspect she is worried about spoiling her perfect manicure by typing my name into the database. As I haven’t been back for eighteen months, having tried a couple of places on visits to the UK in the interim, I am not what you would call one of their esteemed regulars.

My colourist is called David. Something of a misnomer: Goliath would be more fitting. David boasts rippling muscles, and an all-over fake tan, the buttons of his white overalls straining to contain his hairless, brown hulk-like torso. His mouth looks oddly inflated, and I spend the next half-hour (€ 107) trying to work out whether he has had collagen injections, or just has a terminal pout. Unfortunately, David also has rather rough hands, and a tendency to pull each strand of hair painfully taut as he applies the white paste. I wince, quietly, and wager that the wealthy forty and fiftysomething ladies around me with their generous tips and insipid conversation about their next trip to Mauritius get somewhat gentler treatment. Thankfully I am permitted to keep my glasses on throughout this part of the proceedings so I escape the vapid chatter by burying my nose in a Japanese ghost story.

The time comes for rinsing, and I dare to hope that I might, at least, get a head massage. But no, instead David manhandles my scalp with his large, hulk-like hands, roughly applies a soin(€ 14) and disappears without a word, after twiddling a dial at the side of my reclining chair.

I sit and wait. And wait. Look at my watch. Cross and uncross my legs. Sigh. Begin to worry about the fact that I have left my handbag out of sight at the other side of the room. Wish I had my glasses. Wonder where the toilet is. And why there is a concealed rolling pin inside my chair, working its way up my back. Indeed, I am being massaged by a chair. A warning would have been nice. And although the feeling is soothing at the outset, it gets a little stale after twenty minutes have elapsed. And makes me painfully aware of my bladder.

A few more interminable minutes pass, and finally an apologetic junior appears to rinse off my conditioning treatment. David, it appears, does not do rinsing. The shower spurts into life; I cross my legs tightly.

Rinsed and turbaned, much relieved after a visit to the ladies’ room, I am ready to face the last hurdle: Jean-Francois, hairdresser extraordinaire. He claims to remember me, but allow me to remain inwardly sceptical. I am asked to stand, something I have only ever experienced in France. Ten snips later (€ 77) a junior is enlisted on blow drying duty. J-F dries the last few strands, and shows me how to do a zig-zaggedy parting.

I replace my glasses.

The results are surprisingly good. Goliath has done a decent job with the highlights – subtle, but not invisible – and J-F Superstar has at least respected my wishes, leaving my hair mid-length and layering the front, as instructed. So far, so good. I am escorted to the front desk to settle my bill. Studiously ignored by the surgery queen for a full five minutes while she tries to persuade my hairdresser to take more appointments, despite the fact that his last four clients have all complained about the long wait.

Finally, she deigns to turn to me, compliments David on the colour (causing me to wonder if maybe it is’t a bit too brassy, after all?) and calculates the grand total. I gulp. We are in digital camera territory and I am having a flashback to the last time I stood on this spot and vowed never to darken their doors again. How could I have forgotten?

But the worst is still to come. With a vinegary smile, like bile wouldn’t melt in her mouth, Madame Nip Tuck continues:

“Dis donc, vous en aviez besoin, hein?”

It is probably A Good Thing that I don’t have a pair of scissors to hand.

I try sitting up in bed, as an experiment, but this does not work for me at all, and I let myself flop back into the pillows, groaning theatrically.

“Tea?” enquires Lover, appearing, as if by magic, with two steaming mugs.

“I want my mum,” I whimper, pitifully.

It’s not that I’m ungrateful. Nor am I finding fault with the almost indecent levels of pampering I have been subjected to over the past couple of days. Invariably however, when I feel ill, I remember, with a certain nostalgia-tinged fondness, days off school as a child. Languishing on the sofa in front of daytime television, vaguely aware of the comforting background noises of my mother clattering about in the kitchen. The compulsory ‘feeling better’ meal of boiled egg and soldiers which she always made once I was on the mend. To this day, I cannot eat a boiled egg unless I’m convalescing. It just wouldn’t be right.

Today there is actually nothing wrong with me that a flu-strength Lempsip wouldn’t fix – although a French doctor would probably say it was a very serious rhinopharyngite and write me a prescription as long as my forearm. But I reserve the right to feel sorry for myself all the same.

I sip my tea pensively, then turn to Lover, casting around for inspiration.

“I have nothing to write about on my blog. What can I write about?”

“Hmm,” he says. “Make something up… how about the fact that you came home from work last night and found me in flagrante with a rent boy? That would get a rabid response from those commenters of yours.”

I frown, wondering whether I should worry that rent boys were involved in the first idea that spontaneously popped into Lover’s mind, and at 7.00 am on a Wednesday morning. Thankfully, I remember that there is some story involving a British MP and a rent boy in the UK news at the moment, so I should probably not consider this flight of fancy a serious cause for concern.

“You realise your inbox would be deluged with hate mail? Or you’d be tracked down and lynched? My readers are a very loyal bunch. Well, apart from Tess, and Dr Analyst.”

He has to concede that I have a point. Using his real name in my comments box is possibly starting to look like less of a good idea. It may limit his future margin for manoeuvre considerably.

“Anyway, be careful what you wish for,” I continue, mischievously. “When Mr Frog asked me to flesh out his character a little, I had him dancing around my living room in women’s clothing to the Scissor Sisters.”

Oh yes. The possibilities are endless…